The Electoral Roll is the official listing of the members of our Chaplaincy. People who are on the Electoral Roll are entitled to vote at our Annual General Meeting. Anyone who is not yet on the Electoral Roll and who wishes to have their name included may request and fill in an application form.

In order to be on the Electoral Roll you need to be baptized, at least 16 years of age and to be a member of the Church of England, a Church in communion with the Church of England, or a member of another Church which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Also, if you are not a member of the Church of England, you need to have been attending St Mary’s Weldam for at least six months.

Names can be added to the Electoral Roll at any time during the year but it has to be brought up to date and frozen two weeks before the date of the Annual General Meeting. This year our AGM will be on 19th April 2015. Therefore, I need to receive any new forms by 5th April 2015 at the latest, but preferably before 29th March so that the updated roll can be published in the AGM papers. If you would like to be on the Electoral Roll, please see me for an application form.

Please note that being on the Electoral Roll does not involve any financial commitment on your part. However, the annual quota that our Chaplaincy has to pay to the Diocese is based on the number on our Electoral Roll. As already mentioned, being on the Electoral Roll entitles you to vote at the AGM. This enables you to take part in the election of those who represent you on the Church Council and gives you a say in any decisions taken at the AGM. Anyone standing for election to the Church Council must have been on the Electoral Roll for at least six months prior to election.

The Electoral Roll is completely renewed every six years, which we did last year in 2013. If your name was not added last year, please give some thought to having your name included this year on the Electoral Roll of the Anglican Church Twente.

The setting of the altar is usually assigned to a few people and they know more about it. It is, however, of interest to us all, as it concerns the core of our worship.

In the first picture we see the chalice covered with the green cloth: pall or pallium with the bursa on top.

The bursa is like an envelope and contains the corporal (second picture).

The corporal is like a table cloth. It is made of white linen or a similar material. It is spread on the altar for the chalice, the paten and all that is needed for the
communion to be placed.

The colour of the pall and the bursa vary according to the liturgical season. Purple for Advent and Lent, White for Festive Days, Red for Pentecost and Martyrs
and Green for the remaining part of the celebrations.

Quite likely you will know what a chaplain is, but what about a rector, a curate, a deacon or a vicar? All these titles can be confusing sometimes. Let me try to explain some of this, having picked up this question.

I need to begin with the Holy Orders that the Church instituted: deacon, priest and bishop. One is ordained deacon and priest, but one is consecrated bishop. The ordination to the diaconate always comes first. You cannot be ordained priest without being ordained deacon. And so it is with bishops: one is first deacon and then priest before being consecrated bishop.

Now, these orders are for life. You are clergy and, unless you make a major mistake (think, for example, of child abuse), you will remain a deacon, priest or bishop for the rest of your life. In the case of grave misbehaviour, you will be defrocked and you can no longer function as a member of the clergy. Once you are ordained, you can be appointed to a certain function. The functions are chaplain, vicar, archdeacon, curate. The different roles as chaplain, vicar and so on change according to the appointment you are in.

- Curate
A curate is a deacon or a priest who is still in training after studies at college or a seminary. The full title is assistant curate, but quite regularly it is abbreviated to curate. A curate “serves his or her title” under the guidance of a training incumbent, usually for a period of three to four years. It depends a bit on the judgement of the bishop, whether he considers you to be ready to take up the responsibility for a parish.

- Archdeacon
An archdeacon is a church official who is in charge of temporal and other affairs in a diocese, with powers delegated from the bishop.
Archdeacons serve the church within a diocese by taking particular responsibility for buildings, including church buildings, the welfare of clergy and their families and the implementation of diocesan policy for the sake of the Gospel within an archdeaconry.
An archdeaconry is a territorial division of a diocese; these vary in number according to the size of the diocese and in a few cases an assistant bishop in a diocese will also fulfil the duties of an archdeacon in part of it. An archdeacon is usually styled The Venerable instead of the usual clerical style of The Reverend.
In the Church of England the position of an archdeacon can only be held by a priest who has been ordained for at least six years. In some other Anglican churches archdeacons can be deacons instead of priests. The Anglican Ordinal presupposes that the functions of archdeacons include those of examining candidates for ordination and then presenting them to the ordaining bishop. (Archdeacon source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archdeacon#Anglican_Communion)

- Vicar
In the UK you can be appointed vicar, responsible for a parish with tenure. This means that the bishop cannot remove you to another parish without your consent. These days, with so many changes, it is helpful if the bishop can remove you. He will still seek your consent, but you are licensed.

- Chaplain
A chaplain is a vicar working in a parish abroad, outside the UK, but can also be a cleric in the army or assigned to assist the bishop. Then there are hospital chaplains, who care for the sick in that particular hospital.

Sidesmen are the first people you meet when you enter a church and quite a lot depends on them. They need to be welcoming and spot the people who are new or a bit uneasy because they haven’t been to church for a long time. They need to make people feel comfortable enough so that they will be reassured and able to cope with the unusualness of the liturgy.

Sidesmen in the Church of England are more than people who hand out the books and leaflets. They share, when they are on duty, the responsibility with the wardens.

In the UK the wardens are sworn in by the Archdeacon after their election and every year special services are organized to do so. The sidesmen and women are specifically invited to be present at those services. In one of my parishes even a special meal was organized for the council members and the sidesmen after such a service, to emphasize the importance of a sidesperson. It is a particular job and a sidesperson needs to be sensitive to the needs of people, especially if they are newcomers. They need to give people space to find their feet, but also make them feel welcome, without overwhelming them. Quite a job to find the right balance, but very important if we want new people to cross the threshold of our churches − and that threshold is sometimes higher than we can imagine!

At the beginning of Holy Week the Chrism Mass is celebrated. A Chrism Mass is the Eucharist in Holy Week in which the oils are blessed and then given to the people who have come to collect them and take them to their chaplaincies or parishes. This not only happens in the Anglican Church, but also in the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.

On a visit to the Syrian Orthodox Monastry in Glane, the monk who guided us round explained that a baby baptized in their church is undressed entirely and rubbed with oil all over. We Anglicans and Roman Catholics just make a sign of the cross with oil on the baby’s forehead.

There are three oils: the oil for anointing catechumens, the oil for anointing the sick, and the chrism for the great rites that make visible the great power of the Holy Spirit: baptism, confirmation and priestly and episcopal ordination. The oils are sacramental signs. We are a sacramental people. Our Christian faith is not only spiritual but also physical. Our redemption is about the salvation of the fullness of what we are – body and soul. The oil points us towards his presence.

The first oil, the oil of catechumens, is perhaps the least understood of the oils. This is because it is used for those who are not even Christian – it is used before baptism, sometimes long before a baptism. It was originally used for those who were just beginning their journey towards Christ. It therefore is a sign that even before we are certain that we wish to be with God, God already seeks us!

The oil of the sick expresses God’s strengthening presence when a person’s body or mind or spirit is weakened. The third oil, the sacred Chrism, seems to be perhaps the most noble, because aromatic oils are blended in with that of the olive. Since Old Testament times, it has been used to anoint kings, including the monarchs of England, to this day. It is used at ordinations, and most importantly it is the oil used after baptism and in confirmation, to express the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The Feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for Body of Christ), also known as Corpus Domini, is a Latin Rite liturgical solemnity celebrating the tradition and belief in the body and blood of Jesus Christ and his Real Presence in the Eucharist. It emphasizes the joy of the institution of the Eucharist, which was observed on Holy Thursday in the somber atmosphere of the nearness of Good Friday.

In the present Roman Missal, the feast is designated the solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.[1] It is also celebrated in some Anglican, Lutheran, and Old Catholic Churches that hold similar beliefs regarding the Real Presence.

The feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, "where the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is not a holy day of obligation, it is assigned to the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day".[1] At the end of Holy Mass, there is often a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, generally displayed in a monstrance. The procession is followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

A notable Eucharistic procession is that presided over by the Pope each year in Rome, where it begins at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran and makes its way to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, where it concludes with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Corpus Christi is included in the calendar of a few Anglican churches, most notably the Church of England. The feast is also celebrated by some Anglo-Catholic parishes even in provinces of the Anglican Communion that do not officially include it in their calendars. In the Church of England it is known as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi) and has the status of a Festival. Although its observance is optional, where kept, it is typically celebrated as a major holy day.

During the sixteenth century, people returned to their mother church, the main church or cathedral of the area, for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday. This was either a large local church, or more often the nearest cathedral.

Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone "a-mothering", although whether this term preceded the observance of Mothering Sunday is unclear. In later times, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, since on other days they were prevented by conflicting working hours, and servants were not given free days on other occasions.

Children and young people who were "in service" (as household servants) were given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their "mother" church). The children would pick wild flowers along the way to place in the church or give to their mothers.

Eventually, the religious tradition evolved into the Mothering Sunday secular tradition of giving gifts to mothers.